British Muslim Students Group Threatens to Leave National Representative Body Over Suspension of President Accused of Anti-Semitism

The Fed­er­a­tion of Stu­dent Islam­ic Soci­eties (FOSIS), a nation­al umbrel­la orga­ni­za­tion rep­re­sent­ing Islam­ic soci­eties at uni­ver­si­ties through­out the UK, has pub­lished a press release threat­en­ing to lead “dis­af­fil­i­a­tion cam­paigns” against the British Nation­al Stu­dent Union (NUS) over the sus­pen­sion of NUS Pres­i­dent-elect Shaima Dal­lali. Dal­lali had been under inves­ti­ga­tion by the Union since March 2022 over alle­ga­tions of anti-Semit­ic social media posts. Accord­ing to the FOSIS state­ment:

We are deeply con­cerned with NUS’ neg­li­gence in com­mu­ni­cat­ing with FOSIS regard­ing the explic­it Islam­o­pho­bic abuse Shaima expe­ri­enced, as part of the NUS-sanc­tioned Inde­pen­dent Inves­ti­ga­tion. NUS states2, “if there was a need to get expert input on Islam­o­pho­bia, we would approach FOSIS for guid­ance and to advise on who may be able to help.” To date, we have not been con­tact­ed nor con­sult­ed regard­ing this mat­ter which leads us to believe that the out­come of this inves­ti­ga­tion will be far removed from giv­ing Shaima jus­tice for what she has had to endure.

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FOSIS, where Dal­lali for­mer­ly held lead­er­ship posi­tions, accused the NUS of fail­ing to address “insti­tu­tion­al Islam­o­pho­bia” and being neg­li­gent in com­mu­ni­cat­ing with FOSIS. Found­ed in 1963, FOSIS rep­re­sents British Mus­lim stu­dents in 600 Islam­ic soci­eties at uni­ver­si­ties through­out the Unit­ed King­dom. It has numer­ous ties to the GMB net­work in the UK.

In March 2022, Dal­lali was elect­ed as NUS Nation­al Pres­i­dent for a two-year term and would have been due to take office in July but was stood down after an inves­ti­ga­tion was launched into alle­ga­tions of anti-Semit­ic posts on social media. Among oth­ers, she was accused of label­ing a Jor­dan­ian cler­ic crit­i­cal of Hamas a “dirty Zion­ist” and pen­ning an arti­cle that called Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood (GMB) spir­i­tu­al leader Youssef Qaradawi the “moral com­pass for the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty at large.” The affair prompt­ed the British gov­ern­ment to cut ties with and stop fund­ing the NUS, remov­ing it from all Depart­ment for Edu­ca­tion stu­dent groups and replac­ing it with alter­na­tive stu­dent representation.

An April 2022 inves­ti­ga­tion by the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) found that Dal­lali has had addi­tion­al prob­lem­at­ic ties. This includ­ed serv­ing as Project Man­ag­er for the pro-Pales­tin­ian advo­ca­cy group Europal Forum. (aka Euro­pean Pales­tin­ian Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Forum), a group whose lead­ers have his­tor­i­cal­ly been close to the GMB and the Euro­pean Hamas sup­port infrastructure.